What is your bottom line?

Jan 17, 2024 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – Every year after the Budget speech is read, I have to remind Guyanese that they place too much reliance on the national Budget for their own prospects. The Budget is a one year financial plan of the government’s expenditure and revenue.

If as a citizen, you look each year to see what the government is doing for you, then you have problems because you have a wrong outlook. You should be more concerned with what the government is taking from you and what are your personal expenditure and income earning plans. You do not have to worry anymore about government depriving you of income through taxes; you don’t have the trepidation of worrying about devaluation, the shortage of foreign exchange or import restrictions that will harm your money-making capacity. Focus more on your own Budget rather than the nation’s Budget.

Unfortunately, there are persons who are more concerned about the Budget of the government than they are about their own budgeting. Many of them do not even bother to budget. They know that their income will never match their spending and so they simply go through each month and each year as normal, and hope that some backer of good fortune will befall their way.

But you can bet many of them are following the Budget debates intensely. They are listening to what both sides have to say. One side is trying to paint a bleak picture while at the same time painting the government as inconsiderate. The other side is essentially saying that when the Opposition was in office, it messed up and therefore has no moral authority to be critical of the government.

And while this is going on the Guyanese people are playing the game of survival. They are doing so using a wide range of ingenious methods. There are a great many people in Guyana who are playing the game of luck and chance. They can be seen each week buying Lotto tickets and gambling in the game shops and in the casinos in the hope of winning. They have a dream about their own lives and that dream depends on the Lotto, the gambling shops and slot machines.

The overwhelming majority are losing. But they live in hope that one day fortune will smile their way.  There are some guys who have a lot of money in their pocket but still are always asking for a raise. It is almost mechanical with them. They see you and they instinctively ask for a ‘raise’. It is quite an amazing thing to see the ease and shamelessness with which people can see you and ask you for a raise not wondering about your own circumstances.

Many others depend on the kindness of their relatives overseas. If they ever went overseas and saw how hard their relatives had to work for that US$100 that is sent back to help support them, they would not ask as often for help. The Finance Minister has read his Budget for the country. It is the largest Budget in the country’s history and there is an additional cushion with the availability now of oil proceeds. But too many Guyanese forget that while oil revenues are being earned it is a pittance.

It is true we do have oil but what we are obtaining for the extraction of this oil will remain a controversy for years until the Guyanese people decide to unite and force their leaders to come together and demand renegotiation. The oil companies’ bottom line is solid because of the good deal they got.
The government has a good bottom line. It has money now to have a trillion dollars Budget, almost five times what the PPPC spent before it demitted office in 2015.

But what about the average Guyanese? What is that person’s bottom line? How much is he or she in the red? And how is the deficit to be financed?
These are questions which the average man does not think of in technical terms. He or she thinks in terms of living. He or she must survive. He or she must make choices and make ends meet. Survival is the name of the game.
The masses hope that the government will not mess up the economy and make life difficult for them. But like the government, they cannot be certain as to how things will unfold.
People must look after their own well-being. They must take care of themselves. They must live within their means. They must remember that a person can have a great deal and still be unhappy. In fact, the happiest persons around are those who have little. They live within their means. They live within their Budgets. How are you living?

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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• budget, financial, Guyanese, Prospects, speech

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